Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Great Steam Numbers

I don't know if the nudity and sex had anything to do with the sales. Maybe? Maybe not

It just seems like after the bear sex from the Panel from Hell the game generated a lot more buzz. Whether that actually led to more people buying it, who knows.

I was trying to compare apple to apple, but you do have a point. Since people are basically getting Starfield for free on Game Pass, why not take it? Even with Game Pass, the sales numbers are almost the same as BG3 and we're talking about the studio that has much higher budget, recognizability, a big company behind it that can pour almost infinite amount of money and open world games are much more popular than crpgs. Add to that the hype that was generated for Starfield and you can clearly see BG3 sales are well above expectations.


Dude, you really should play the game or verify your sources. Claiming that sales are driven by graphics nudity and gratuitous sex is simply not true (I don't want to use a different word because knowing you, you may feel offended). There is nudity yes, there is sex yes, but it's a small fraction of the game and frankly, such comments are simply misleading.

Nor do you know how many played the game for an hour or two and uninstalled it. Due to the nature of Game Pass conflating player numbers with sales is intellectually dishonest.

Consider this a player with a monthly Game Pass subscription, see Starfield has released. Since the game is included in the cost of his Game Pass he downloads it and plays it for 3 or 4 hours. After this time he is of the opinion the game is not for him and uninstalls it. Do you truly believe that the person doing this carries the same weight in determining the success of a launch as the person that actually buys the game at full price?

Has Starfield succeeded with it's launch, I would for sure say yes. The goal from Microsoft, from day one, was not actual game sales but rather Game Pass interest and subscriptions. I know a LOT of people that bought Game Pass for one month to try Starfield. Some discontinued the subscriptions and others kept it, either for Starfield or other games offered. As a purely financial success based on sales, that is MUCH harder to judge. On the whole I think it did good, but the waters get muddied when Microsoft is DELIBERATELY speaking to people playing the game, not the direct sales. Remember the person that loads Starfield on a Game Pass subscription and an hour later uninstalls it is considered by that count to have played the game.

Sure but we can't judge "success" by sales alone.

We don't know how many people buy a game, play for a few hours, then stops because they've lost interest. And depending on the platform they can't get a refund. Or if they bought a physical copy maybe they sold it.

I'm sure there are plenty of games where people bought into the hype but now they're stuck with it.

What metric do you use to judge success?

To me, it's clear that BG3 had an enormously successful launch. Is this actually a debate?

To me, it's equally clear that Starfield wasn't as well received as a lot of folks anticipated. Reviews/sales/concurrent players

I feel like people are bending over backwards to avoid this.

I think both have been successful. Like I think BG3 is a 9 or 9.5 while Starfield is an 8 maybe 7.5.

As for what I judge as success I'm not really sure to be honest. Maybe critical success? I just think sales alone is deceiving because a game can be hyped up or have a huge marketing campaign then people buy it . But it turns out to be terrible then they're stuck with it.

*I have played Starfield for 64 hours*

Starfield may or may not be a success for Bethesda and Microsoft, we have no way of knowing until we get detailed sales figures. If we are talking about revenue we WOULD need to know:

1) Gamepass versus purchase
2) How many people who subbed to gamepass FOR starfield kept the subscriptions
3) How much time they played Starfield/are they still consistently playing it.

If the game cost 450 Million then they would need to sell about 5 Million Licenses with the digital upgrade package in order to just break even or they would need to bring in that many subscribers for 11 Months on gamepass.

It will take a year or more to get solid numbers on that and we won't know until maybe next years investor call.

However, Starfield is a failure for gamers because it's a $450 Million price tag game that is severely underwhelming. It's the same bullshit game companies have been foisting on consumers for years and in the wake of games like Bg3 and Elden Ring it's a step backwards.

F76 may have been a fluke failure, Starfield is a pattern of behavior. Bethesda is going to just keep making crap like this. They have gotten too big and too corporate to make truly innovative games.

In comparison Elden Ring cost $200 million to make and made 6.5 Billion. When Shadow of the Erdtree comes out next year it will probably make half that again in sales. It's a massive success.

Bg3 cost 100 Million to make and so far has brought in about 600-700 Million and is expected to break 1 Billion within 6 months to a year. Another success.

Starfield shouldn't be successful. Starfields success is our loss.

Clearly you don't have a good understanding of who DnD nerds are, and the power and draw of interactive sex versus merely passively watching it in a video.

And to repeat something I've been saying again and again for years, 99+% of BG3 fans are not here in this forum.

You are right in that sales/profits are very much an appropriate metric for judging "success" from a business standpoint. But artistic success is much harder to judge, precisly because unlike business success which can be measured objectively and quantitatively, artistic success is very much both subjective and nonquantifiable (which includes critics' reviews).

Hey I totally agree with you ... except 100% in reverse. Everything you say here about Starfield and Bethesda I would say about BG3 and Larian, and vice versa. So the more important question is, what makes your OPINION right and mine wrong?

Haha, classic.

Yeah, and Skyrim is a game full of very simplified one-click action combat, puzzles and quests tweaked to "solve themselves", an in-game GPS guiding you at any step, smallish one-way dungeons and a character (creation) system barely worth analyzing in-depth. Hey, I played that too. But Skyrim is the TES formula tweaked to a degree so that even those who'd never touched a TES game before were encouraged to pick it up asap. BG3 meanwhile at heart is a release still harkening back to Origin Systems/Interplay 1990s design ethos heavily, despite its CoOp and systemic design also found in Zelda. Which is the more remarkable thing.

And not a bad one, if you ask me. This is not a discussion about quality. But: A lot of RPGs in particular bigger budget have become this streamlined, it's no wonder there's so much discussion about what still qualifies as one. That's the natural progression though, as any genre's core audience is finite -- if you STILL want to further grow, you have to reach beyond that. Either way, this won't influence any other AAA studio left, mind. Except for them trying their hardest to copy all the motion captured (bear) sex in the hopes of one-upping their own sales perhaps. Like Larian, studios are usually specialized, and most bigger studios haven't made a game quite like this in many many years. For which Larian, too, can be grateful in a sense. If it hadn't been for studios abandoning this market, DOS1 would have been not as succesful as it were already, starting right the added funds aquired on Kickstarter.

I'm curious about what happens to Larian next though. The last time they directly competed with the big dogs (in parts due to investor pressure), that didn't work out. Plus, if they start developing different kind of experiences meant to get bigger and bigger, they too may leave their own brand niche they've carved now ever since -- for somebody else to possibly step up. They should perhaps rather best follow the FromSoft route. There's been what seems a fairly natural growth in audience ever since DOS1, similar to From. And whilst Elden Ring is in many ways far more accessible than any Dark Souls Game -- they still didn't toss it all out in the hopes of earning quick buck. As a result, they've sort of created a genre and brand recognition for themselves.

In priori, because I am using data and you are using feelings. Which is fine, some people feel instead of think and I wish you the best of luck with that.

And look, if your idea of a great game is Starfield then I just don't think you and I will ever see eye to eye on anything. Starfield is the Nickelback of video games - that's an example of an opinion based on bias - that also happens to be objectively true. (kidding, but not really)

Bg3/Larian has a lot of problems, but Bg3's problems are not the same or even in the same realm as Starfield and Bethesda. The problem is your emotions blind you to any objective analysis which means you are not able to provide useful feedback to pinpoint the problems. So you are just stuck with rancour and bitterness - more emotions - which you filter your perception through resulting in the comments you make. You are an emotional guy it seems.

Feelings do not have the same value as facts and data, especially when it comes to analysis, and no argument can reverse that. So that is why - to answer your question.

Blackheifer, please refrain from personal level comments about individuals in posts.

Well, I am happy for Larian that BG3 sells well for them.

However I would love BG3 just as much if it wouldnt sell. I am certain already that this is a game that I will keep playing until the day I die. Just like the first two Baldurs Gate, Vampire: The Masquerae: Bloodlines, and hopefully also Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, though I am unfortunately having problems to install the later on current systems.

I bought Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines when nobody else would, making me part of a 70,000 or some such "elite" who actually got the game before it later became popular. Though I have to admit that back then I was a bit lukewarm on the game due to the many problems of the game. I only really became a fan once Wesp5 and his many contributors made the game much more playable.

I played Vanguard: Saga of Heroes for as long as I could, despite it having only small success. I still would play it, if that would be possible.

Really the only favorite game I have of which I am not sure if I will play it again is No Man's Sky. In many ways the game got worse recently. Its also annoying so much of the game is blocked if you dont play online.

Overall how big or small a success a game is thus doesnt matter much for me, as long as it is the right game for myself.

I would argue everyone should play the games they enjoy, no matter how other people feel about those games.



About Starfield, I do hope that Bethesda, because it is now owned by Microsoft, gets access to better engines, and will make a better Starfield 2 in future. Mostly one with stronger stories, stronger characters, an overall much smaller gameworld, but a gameworld filled with more content and more high quality content, and features like a seamless gameworld and realistic viewing distances which the current game engine couldnt provide.



About feelings, I think feelings are just as important as thoughts. Thoughts are always partial and incomplete, while feelings can give you much easier and faster access to the big picture. Feelings can be wrong, thats true, but so can thoughts. Neither is perfect and using both is therefore important.

For sure! But selling well means that Larian will have enough funds to make more great games like BG3 in the future! Also, perhaps other publishers will be willing to fund similar games when they see BG3’s success!

I just want to point out that the comparison was Data and Feelings, not thoughts. While thoughts are generally accepted as more cognitive processes, if you are using bad data or have poor thought processes then you will always reach bad conclusions. generally without the intervention of well-known psychedelics our brains get into patterns of behavior based on how we process data. Our minds write their own operating systems and ways of processing data based on our experiences and genetics.

Feelings on the other hand represent bias, usually unhelpful, that skews value judgements in ways that can lead to very poor decision making. Bigotry has its genesis in feelings-based thinking, especially when a person is unaware of their own biases or both unaware and subject to them (this is called low emotional intelligence).

It used to be a criteria to be considered an adult to gain mastery over your emotions to an extent that they did not intrude on your decision making.

Understandably empathy and low emotional intelligence are mutually exclusive.

There will be a quiz on Monday.

I hope that not only does BG3’s success mean more games from Larian, but more high budget CRPGs in general. Maybe in 4 or 5 years we can see more from this genre than just the small studio and indie projects which just don’t do it for me.

Really looking forward to Broken Roads next month (Aussie post-apocalypse with some fascinating morale mechanics attached, pascifist playstyle possible and Colin McComb on the writing team)... Demo's out on STEAM.

But, yeah. The thing is that CRPGs too are really really really complex games. And even on moderate budgets and production values, there need to be a lot of cuts to be made (which is why Pillars Of Eternity had that one standout branching questline in the Raedric quest... trumping all else).

It needn't necessarily be in the super high budget AAA space, with dozens of people working on audiovisuals alone, and generally hundreds of people working in the game. But there's still plenty middle ground left to cover in between those behemoth projects and say, Underrail.

As for the high budget AAA space, there's not going to be any massive shift, even moreso not in the forseeable future. Firstly, the few AAA studios doing these kinda games have specialized themselves on the kind of games they do just as Larian did (also in terms of personell... and that's hundreds of specialists). Secondly, contemporary AAA projects take half a decade+ to develop, and there is few developers capable of doing that. Thirdly, unless BG3 in the long haul breaks Witcher records in numbers shipped (which it obviously won't do), nobody will worry much.

The only thing I can see happening here is Bioware dialing their ever present "streamlining" a tad backto the kinda games they did with DA Origins and Kotor (which essentially were simplified BG-Likes with less class, spell, party and combat complexity alongside to more linear hub-style maps and critical path structures on purpose). That is, if EA would allow them to do that. There's a crossover audience now either way with BG3 having gone the DA Origins style of cinematic presentation. In that sense, BG3 has bridged a gap that's existed ever since between the CRPG and the AAA space (whilst also generally exploited that there hasn't been ANY Dragon Age game in a decade now running).

This is something a lot on the general gaming community do not understand. Part of the success of the Battle Royale genre was the incredible simplicity needed for game development which meant MUCH higher profit ratios. It is also why we are seeing so many procedural RPGs come into the RPG genre. A procedural system simplifies the backend creation method and cost by quite a bit.

A "proper" RPG will require a great deal of writing to begin with. The story is the core of the game with everything else being designed to support that core. This is unlike "most" RPGs today which write a "story" around the game mechanics and core. By creating the story first you then begin iterations of that story as the game is built with some limitations of technology forcing story changes. These changes can lead to new directions and ideas and so the creative process, creation of the plot and adventures becomes the biggest time consumer in the core game creation.

Once you have the "technology" needed to implement the story as envisioned, now you need to add flesh and muscle to that skeleton. This is the effort for the artwork which is based on the lore. Again many companies do this backwards and develop the "story" based on existing art assets.

This entire process is so much more complex than most other game development as all interactions of the various teams can dramatically impact the final experience, in much more nuanced ways than other game types.

This means well done CRPGs have longer lead times, higher development costs and thus lower profit ratios that other gaming genre.